What other costs are involved when someone passes away?
Funeral Home charges do not make up the total cost of a funeral service. Let’s say that a spouse passes away and the surviving spouse chooses burial. To purchase the interment rights of two graves and pay for one to be opened could cost a bit more than $4500.00
Should you opt for cremation, the charge could be $452.00 and then you will need to decide what you want to do with the cremated remains. You could purchase a cemetery lot to inter them in (in the Chatham-Kent cemeteries you can inter 2 cremated remains in a plot that already has a casket interred there, or if there will not be a casket interred in a single lot you can inter 4 cremated remains). You could purchase a niche in a columbarium (an outside structure with separate units for inurning cremated remains). Depending on the size of the urn, you can place two cremated remains inside each niche in the columbarium in Blenheim. You can scatter cremated remains but if you are going to bury an urn, it must be buried in a cemetery. Or you can take cremated remains home, but just keep in mind that someday, unless all of your future generations are going to keep them at home, something will eventually need to be done.
The Blenheim News Tribune and the Ridgetown Independent News continue to include obituaries free of charge as a community service…they are the only newspapers that I know of that do this service for the community and kudos to them for doing that! An average obituary placed in a daily newspaper can cost between $180.00 and $300.00 per day depending on the publication.
Other costs may include honorariums to clergy, organists, soloists, pipers, etc. Generally families purchase flowers and some include luncheons after services…I allow families to include all of these charges within a funeral account so that they don’t have to go around with their cheque books to pay each one separately and then everything is included on the final billing.
